“I am not sure who is a doctor and who is not?” Ghani said during the council’s inauguration ceremony at the Presidential Palace. “The term ‘doctor’ should be used for someone who has a degree and proficiency.”

According to the president, the poorest and the most deprived segments of the society had the least access to health services.

He instructed the Public Health Minister to work on reforming hospitals and determining adequate wages for doctors and nurses.

The president also criticized quality of some medicines being provided by pharmacies to citizens.“It is necessary that people have access to quality medicines.”

“But today the medicines lack quality and an evil circle, which is known to everyone, under deals with some pharmacies and doctors provides poor quality medicines. This process cannot be tolerated anymore,” he said.

The president said pharmacies should provide quality medicines to citizens and medicine system in this regard should be set up in such a way to gain people’s trust and citizens get access to quality medicines.

Ghani added establishing the Afghanistan Medical Council was one of the unity government’s promises that was finally realized and it would resolve people’s problems to some extent.

He asked the council to focus on doctors’ educational level and their ethics, saying one of the most important duties of the council was determining the level and providing a doctor his/her right based on documents.

Meanwhile, Nasreen Oryakhel, the newly inaugurated council’s head, said their goals included registration of doctors, promotion of medical ethics, raising level of professional knowledge, addressing complaints and violations of medical personnel

Public health minister Dr. Ferozuddin, also spoke on the occasion, saying provision of health services and workforce played an effective role in systematizing the health sector.

He said the health ministry lacked exact figures about doctors in the country, something he called a major issue and said only 4,000 doctors working with the public sector were registered with the ministry.

He called the shortage of female doctors another issue, saying still 40 percent of health centres lacked female medical staff. In Nuristan, Paktika, Zabul, Uruzgan provinces, no woman doctors existed and incentive packages provision also did not succeed.